


like steel

by kalypsobean



Category: Leverage
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 10:06:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7218208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a good knife is distinctive. people are like knives. people are distinctive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like steel

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt at [comment_fic](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/727682.html?thread=95980162#t95980162) by tigriswolf: _Leverage, Eliot Spencer + author's choice, (no Nate/Eliot, please), people are like knives_

A good knife is distinctive; Eliot knows his knives, how they have personalities and feelings because of how they're weighted, how they fit in his hand, the sound they make if he has to sharpen them, the way oil settles into the blade as he cares for them. He knew knives before he knew people, named the ones in his pouch and the ones in his arsenal and learned to tell them apart in the dark, how each wants to be used. He knows how to make them a part of him, if he needs, and without them he's lost, hyperaware and tense.

 

"Cheer up, grumpyface," Parker says, nudging his upper arm with her shoulder. Parker is steel, never dulled, a solid practical handle, weighted perfectly for flexibility and damage. "It's just a plane." The word silly is unspoken, because she knows him as well, and how flying leaves them both exposed - him without his weapons and her in a confined space with people.

 

Hardison is a precision scalpel, best used for the purpose he carved for himself, but good enough in an emergency, a reliable backup, a last line of comfort and defence. "Why couldn't I be the husband?" he grouches. "You two make me sick, with all the touching and the thing and the other thing." He gestures with his hands, and Eliot has no idea what that's meant to mean. 

"Is that us?" Parker says, grabbing Eliot's arm and leaning over him to see better. She likes the aisle seats and Hardison always books himself the window, so Eliot is in the middle, again. 

 

"Here," Hardison says. "Stop scaring people with your face." It's not much, a ceramic butterfly knife that had to be imported illegally, but it's as if the coolness of the blade and handle radiates from his hand and spreads through his body, until he can breathe again. He is a machete, capable of wide sweeping damage; he is a scorpion, sharp and deadly; he is the knife in his hand, silent and undetectable until his task is done.

 

He is whatever they need him to be.


End file.
